Linkara
Linkara is the pseudonym for Lewis Jeffery Lovhaug1, a Minnesotan comic book reviewer and author. The name comes from a series of self-published books that he wrote at ages 14-19 (and subsequently may revisit since he wants to revise them to fix plot problems, characterizations, and various other mistakes he made due to being young and inexperienced). He is also a Former Contributor for Channel Awesome. Description Usually appearing seated on a sofa, he wears a distinctive trilby hat and brown coat, usually over a charcoal t-shirt. He will also sometimes brandish a flintlock pistol (which is fake) and the Green Ranger Dragon Dagger as seen in the TV series Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. The first proper appearance of the pistol was when Linkara introduced himself to the site. After giving a brief tour of his house, which consisted of saying what he was sitting on, Linkara brought out the pistol and ordered the viewer to get out before he shot them. The pistol has made a number of appearances (and often referred to as the "Magic Gun"). Most recently it was used as a suicide prop which Linkara set on standby, should the comic he was reviewing prove to be too much for him. The pistol's rather dark backstory was revealed in October 2010. Linkara is notorious for guest-starring in numerous other videos; he even guest reviewed with the Nostalgia Critic twice. His numerous collaborations with Spoony are the most notable of this. Unlike many other Channel Awesome personalities, Linkara prefers to avoid profanity in his appearances. When asked about this in a Q&A special, he pointed out that he does swear off camera, but avoids the more "severe" obscene terms on screen to avoid it becoming "shock factor" and it later became a habit he stuck with. He also stated he doesn't feel he can swear "gracefully" like other reviewers such as Nostagia Critic or The Angry Video Game Nerd, and that if he started it would likely be very jarring to regular viewers. However, he does not mind others who do swear. In one collaborative review, he even went so far as to have Bennett The Sage cuss for him when he went on a rant. On March 24th, 2018, Linkara announced on Twitter, Tumblr, and his website that he has parted ways with Channel Awesome. He will continue to post reviews to his website and YouTube channel. History Atop the Fourth Wall - Text Recaps When Lewis saw the hilarious efforts of sites like Jabootu and The Agony Booth to review and recap horrible movies and TV shows, he took it upon himself to do the same with comic books, seeing it as an untapped market. Like the two sites, he also included the occasional bizarre panel of the comic that he'd place a humorous caption under. He did seventeen text recaps without any other posts on his blog, Atop the Fourth Wall, before he threw in the towel on them. See the article for more information. He had decided that the text recaps took far too long to write out and make funny, going from once a week to once a month to once in a blue moon. As such, he turned the Blog into one that discussed comics and his opinions on them, hoping to do more text recaps in the future. That Guy with the Glasses Contest After discovering ThatGuyWiththeGlasses.com, he became a fan of the site's various videos. When That Guy with the Glasses announced his contest to do videos, Lewis decided to make a video and enter. After enjoying the experience of filming it all and making jokes, he then realized he could do the same thing with his reviews of bad comics. As a special Halloween treat, Lewis did a three-part comic review and recap, the first he had done in quite a while. The first two parts were text recaps of Web of Spider-Man #122 and Amazing Spider-Man #399, covering a small part of what is known in comics as "The Spider-Man Clone Saga." The third recap, of Spider-Man #56, covered the final part of the storyline but was done as a video review. Because of how much fun he had with the concept, Lewis was inspired to do more video recaps. A Feature on ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com After several videos were completed and posted, Lewis sent an e-mail to Mike Michaud asking if the site would be interested in hosting the show, since there was a talent hunt going on at the time. After some discussion, the show was given a trial run of a few episodes, the first two being Lewis' Top 15 WTF Moments in Bad Comics and then his review of the comic book US-1 #1. Because of the overwhelmingly positive response to the videos, Atop the Fourth Wall, and subsequently Linkara, became a part of the site's team, going on to appear in many crossovers, second only to Doug Walker, himself. Eventually, he went on to become a major character in the Year One and Year Two crossovers, serving an even more vital part in the latter. In Year Three, he had a running gag of wanting to sing, and in Year Four his Linkara character was mostly sidelined to make way for Mechakara, who was one of the major baddies of the film. Thanks to a wildly successful Indiegogo campaign, Atop the Fourth Wall: The Movie was released in daily parts spanning from Nov. 24th to Nov. 28th. It will also be released on DVD. Comics in Five Panels 5 Panel Comics, like 5 Second Movies and 5 Second Games are snippets of the story where Linkara would get to the gist of that the story is about. Usually they have hilarious results. For example, in the Titans Five Panel Comics' video, he outlined the main points of the story with some running commentary. "This Comic Sucks." The traditional format of the show is as follows: Lewis does an introduction that varies in length and usually is without many jokes, then goes on to describe the cover of the book and the story as it goes along, making jokes at the expense of the material. Panels of the comic will move across the screen (in what is described as "The Ken Burns effect") as Lewis narrates and performs voices for characters. Sometimes he'll drift into explanations of some of the situations behind the story, trying to educate the audience on comic books while also further explaining why the comic itself is so awful. The show ends with Lewis saying, "This comic sucks" (or variations thereof), explaining why it sucks, and then ending on a joke before he angrily throws the comic onto his futon and walks away in disgust. He is also known to burn comics he despises most, including Marvel's Spider-Man story "One More Day". Marvel's Ultimatum was deemed so poor that he decided not to burn it as "this comic is trash, and it deserves to go in the trash" before throwing the graphic novel into the trash. Self-publications Linkara has written and published his own comic series about superheroes. The stories are called "Revolution of the Mask", which is about a group of masked superheroes making a stand for individuality in a dystopic future. Another story is called "Lightbringer" where the main character is the first superhero set in in modern times. It is, in Linkara's words, "a realistic look at superheroes". The art for Lightbringer is done by TGWTG.com's Chad Rocco aka CR!. Original Characters Lewis' character, Linkara, has been said to be an exaggerated version of him and is considered the world's "Champion" as dictated by the villainous Lord Vyce. Lewis has also invented many original characters played by himself, including minor characters created for running gags like '90s Kid, and major villains like Mechakara. They are: *Pollo the Robot *Mechakara *'90s Kid *Harvey Finevoice *Ninja-Style Dancer *Ensign Munro *Lord Vyce *Dr. Linksano *Lester B. Bum (parody of Doug Walker's Chester A. Bum) *Nimue {C}For more, see Characters. Specials *VLOG: Behind the Scenes "Alone in the Dark" (October 7th, 2009) *Atop the Fourth Wall 2010 trailer (December 5th, 2009 as part of the December 2009 donation drive. December 12th, 2009 on the site.) *Green Ranger Dagger Tutorial (December 26th, 2009) *Power Rangers Review Commentary (February 21st, 2010) *Warrior #1 Commentary (April 16th, 2010) *Year Two: Warrior #2-3 Bloopers (June 11th, 2010) *Linkara and JesuOtaku Interview with Johnny Yong Bosch (July 25th, 2010) *Power Morphicon 2010 (August 14th, 2010) *April Fools Triple Feature (April 1st, 2011) *The Making of the Warrior #1 Review (May 11th, 2011) *Bimbos BC & Adamantium Rage Commentary (July 19th, 2011) *Power Rangers Zeo #1 & Doctor Who Classics #7 Commentaries (July 27th, 2011) *Redesign Pollo Contest (October 5th, 2011) *Linkara at MAGfest & Youmacon (October 15th, 2011) *How to Build a Cybermat (December 1st, 2011) *Nostalgia Critic Star Trek Insurrection Commentary (February 22nd, 2012) *Electric Tale of Pikachu Commentary (March 11th, 2012) *Linkara at ConBravo! (March 13th, 2012) *Kickassia Commentary (April 17th, 2012) *Linkara at Animinneapolis (April 25th, 2012) *Warrior #2-3 Commentary (May 5th, 2012) *Pollo Contest Winners (May 12th, 2012) *Animinneapolis 2012 Q&A (July 15th, 2012) *Linkara Riffs - A Word to the Wives (December 15th, 2012) *Harvey Finevoice Christmas Album (December 23rd, 2012) *AT4W Bloopers, Alternate Takes & Behind the Scenes (January 16th, 2013) *Linkara Riffs - Holiday from Rules? (January 20th, 2013) *Linkara Riffs - The Bottle and the Throttle (January 22nd, 2013) *Linkara Riffs - Let's Be Good Citizens at School (January 24th, 2013) *Linkara Riffs - Just a Spark (January 27th, 2013) *Linkara Riffs - Beginning to Date (January 29th, 2013) *Linkara Riffs - The Gossip (January 30th, 2013) *Linkara Riffs - What About School Spirit? (February 26th, 2013) *Linkara Riffs - Thought for Food & Arranging a Buffet Supper (April 2nd, 2013) *Please Let the Ads Play (May 17th, 2013) *AT4W DVD Vol. 1 - Secret Origins (June 29th, 2013) *Linkara Riffs - Scrooge (1935) (December 25th, 2013) *Linkara Riffs - Family Life (January 19th, 2014) *Let's Play Pokemon Omicron Episodes 1 & 2 (February 23rd, 2014) *Let's Play Pokemon Omicron Episodes 3 & 4 (February 27th, 2014) *Let's Play Pokemon Omicron Episodes 5 & 6 (March 2nd, 2014) *Let's Play Pokemon Omicron Episodes 7 & 8 (March 11th, 2014) *Let's Play Pokemon Omicron Episodes 9 & 10 (March 15th, 2014) *Let's Play Pokemon Omicron Episodes 11 & 12 (March 30th, 2014) *Mobile Suit Gundam Abridged Episode 7 (April 1st, 2014) *Let's Play Pokemon Omicron Episodes 13 & 14 (April 2nd, 2014) *Let's Play Pokemon Omicron Episodes 15 & 16 (April 13th, 2014) *Let's Play Pokemon Omicron Episodes 17 & 18 (April 19th, 2014) *AT4W DVD Vol. 2 - Editorial Mandate (May 20th, 2014) *Let's Play Pokemon Omicron Episodes 19 & 20 (June 1st, 2014) *Let's Play Pokemon Omicron Episodes 21 & 22 (June 21st, 2014) *Let's Play Pokemon Omicron Episodes 23 & 24 (August 19th, 2014) *Linkara Riffs - Graffiti - Fun or Dumb? (August 21st, 2014) *AQLA - Top 15 Night Gallery Segments (September 30th, 2014) *Linkara Riffs - Why Braceros? (November 23rd, 2014) *AT4W DVD Vol. 2.5 - Special Holiday Issue (December 14th, 2014) *Channel Awesome 2014 Holiday Video (December 23rd, 2014) *Let's Play Pokemon Omicron Episodes 25 & 26 (January 8th, 2015) *How to Transfer Gen 1/2 Pokemon Into Gen 3 & Up (February 24th, 2015) *Linkara Riffs - Dating Dos and Don'ts (March 11th, 2015) *Linkara Riffs - Superman: Secret Agent (May 23rd, 2015) *Channel Awesome Halloween Update - Oct. 11-17 (October 11th, 2015) *Atop the Fourth Wall Movie Trailer (November 11th, 2015) *Top 15 Favorite Star Trek Episodes (January 21st, 2016) *Mighty Morphing Rump Rangers (April 1st, 2016) *chain_reaction (May 17th, 2016) *Atop the Fourth Wall: The Movie is Now on DVD! (May 29th, 2016) *Channel Awesome Holiday Video (December 24th, 2016) A Quick Look At In preparation for a show coming out in October 2012 (which would be called Longbox of the Damned), Linkara started A Quick Look At. In this series, he makes short videos talking about horror related movies, shows, etc. *The Amityville Horror & Amityville II: The Possession (July 4th, 2012) *Amityville 3D & Amityville IV: The Evil Escapes (July 7th, 2012) *The Amityville Curse & Amityville 1992: It's About Time (July 8th, 2012) *Amityville: A New Generation & The Amityville Dollhouse (July 10th, 2012) *Exorcist 3 (August 14th, 2012) External Links *Linkara at Channel Awesome *AT4W main site *Linkara on Patreon *Linkara on Twitter *Linkara on Tumblr *Lightbringer, One of Linkara's webcomics. *Revolution of the Mask *Linkara's Youtube *Linkara on AT4W Wiki *AT4W on Tokusatsu Fanon Wiki References Category:Inked Reality Category:Cinema Snob Category:Nostalgia Critic Category:Suburban Knights Category:Former Contributor Category:Nostalgia Chick Category:Kickasssia